As has already been intimated in the beautiful thoughts which

have been expressed by those who have preceded me, the great law,

which was, perhaps, as intelligibly and impressively presented by

Napoleon as by any other man, giving liberty to every man to use

the tools who is qualified to use them--"The tools to him who can

use them!"--or, in better language still, as it fell from the

lips of the Great Teacher, "Every man according to his

ability"--this great law applies with equal force to woman as to

man. There have been women greatly distinguished for physical

power. You remember the old story of Kate Guardinier. A

distinguished wrestler, who came to lay hold of her brother, her

muscular and gigantic brother, and measure strength with him,

found that he was absent. "Well," says Kate, "I will wrestle with

you, and if I throw you, you need not wait the return of my

brother." And so she did, and he went away, fully satisfied that

there was no occasion for him, to wait for any more vigorous arm

than Kate Guardinier wielded. Now, wherever there is a strong

arm, adapt its task to its powers--that is the will of High

Heaven. Wherever there are well-trained powers, let these be

recognized powers, and of course the general results can not be

otherwise than happy.

In regard to the great question who shall take the lead in the

family or the community, let me say, that I do not care through

what medium wisdom may reach me, through what medium I may secure

the benefit of healthful guidance. What I want is wisdom. Wisdom,

goodness, and power are the soul of all government. Wherever

these are combined, there you have the results of wisdom,

goodness, and power. Now, then, if the mother in a household, or

even if a daughter in a household, is more distinguished for

these high qualities, for these grand attainments, than any other

member of that family, why, it is nothing but rebellion against

God, it is nothing but gibbering madness, that would make any

member of that family hesitate to avail himself of the guidance

thus offered, of the light of the wisdom which may thus be poured

around him. In God's name, give me wisdom, give me genuine power,

give me magnanimity!--as to the incidents of the matter, I do not

insist upon them. Whether it be through my father or my mother

that true guidance is afforded, whether it be by my wife or my

daughter that good counsel is offered, very clearly, to reject

these is to spurn the kindness of benignant Heaven.

* * * * *

WENDELL PHILLIPS said:--We are here to enforce, on the

consideration of the civil state, those elements of power which

have already made the social state. You do not find it necessary

to-day to say to a husband, "Your wife has a right to read"; or

necessary to say to Dickens, "You have as many women over your

pages as men." You do not find it necessary to say to the male

members of a church that the women members have a right to change

their creed. All that is settled; nobody contests it. If a man

stood up here and said, "I am a Calvinist, and therefore my wife

is bound to be one," you would send him to a lunatic asylum. You

would say, "Poor man! don't judge him by what he says; he don't

mean it." But law is halting back just where that old

civilization was; we want to change it.

We are not doing anything new. There is no fanaticism about it.

We are merely extending the area of liberty--nothing else. We

have made great progress. The law passed at the last session of

the New York Legislature grants, in fact, the whole question. The

moment you grant us anything, we have gained the whole. You can

not stop with an inconsistent statute-book. A man is uneasy who

is inconsistent. As Thomas Fuller says, "You can not make one

side of the face laugh, and the other cry!" You can not have

one-half your statute-book Jewish, and the other Christian;

one-half of the statute-book Oriental, the other Saxon. You have

granted that woman may be hung, therefore you must grant that

woman may vote. You have granted that she may be taxed,

therefore, on republican principles, you must grant that she

ought to have a voice in fixing the laws of taxation--and this

is, in fact, all that we claim--the whole of it.

Now, I want to consider some of the objections that are made to

this claim. Men say, "Woman is not fit to vote; she does not know

enough; she has not sense enough to vote." I take this idea of

the ballot as the Gibraltar of our claim, for this reason,

because I am speaking in a democracy; I am speaking under

republican institutions. The rule of despotism is that one class

is made to protect the other; that the rich, the noble, the

educated are a sort of probate court, to take care of the poor,

the ignorant, and the common classes. Our fathers got rid of all

that. They knocked it on the head by the simple principle, that

no class is safe, unless government is so arranged that each

class has in its own hands the means of protecting itself. That

is the idea of republics. The Briton says to the poor man, "Be

content; I am worth five millions, and I will protect you." And

America says, "Thank you, sir; I had rather take care of

myself!"--and that is the essence of democracy. (Applause). It is

the corner-stone of progress, also; because, the moment you have

admitted that poor ignorant heart as an element of the

government, able to mold your institutions, those five millions

of dollars, feeling that their cradle is not safe and their life

is in peril, unless that heart is bulwarked with education and

informed with morality, selfishness dictates that wealth and

education should do its utmost to educate poverty and hold up

weakness--and that is the philosophy of democratic institutions.

(Applause). I am speaking in a republic which admits the

principle that the poor are not to be protected by the rich, but

to have the means of protecting themselves. So, too, the

ignorant; so, too, races. The Irish are not to trust to the sense

of justice in the Saxon; the German is not to trust to the

native-born citizen; the Catholic is not to trust to the

Protestant; but all sects, all classes, are to hold in their own

hands the scepter--the American scepter--of the ballot, which

protects each class. We claim it, therefore, for woman. The reply

is, that woman has not got sense enough. If she has not, so much

the more shame for your public-schools--educate her! For you will

not say that woman naturally has not mind enough. If God did not

give her mind enough, then you are brutes, for you say to her:

"Madam, you have sense enough to earn your own living--don't come

to us!" You make her earn her own bread, and, if she has sense

enough to do that, she has enough to say whether Fernando Wood or

Governor Morgan shall take one cent out of every hundred to pay

for fireworks. When you hold her up in both hands, and say, "Let

me work for you! Don't move one of your dainty fingers! We will

pour wealth into your lap, and be ye clothed in satin and velvet,

every daughter of Eve!"--then you will be consistent in saying

that woman has not sense enough to vote. But if she has sense

enough to work, to depend for her bread on her work, she has

sense enough to vote....

But men say it would be very indelicate for woman to go to the

ballot-box or sit in the Legislature. Well, what would she see

there? Why, she would see men. (Laughter). She sees men now. In

"Cranford Village," that sweet little sketch by Mrs. Gaskill, one

of the characters says, "I know these men--my father was a man."

(Laughter). I think every woman can say the same. She meets men

now; she could meet nothing but men at the ballot-box, or, if she

meets brutes, they ought not to be there. (Applause). Indelicate

for her to go to the ballot-box!--but you may walk up and down

Broadway any time from nine o'clock in the morning until nine at

night, and you will find about equal numbers of men and women

crowding that thoroughfare, which is never still. You may get

into an omnibus--women are there, crowding us out, sometimes.

(Laughter). You can not go into a theater without being crowded

to death by two women to one man. If you go to the lyceum, woman

is there. I have stood on this very platform, and seen as many

women as men before me, and one time, at least, when they could

not have met any worse men at the ballot-box than they met in

this hall. (Laughter and applause). You may go to church, and you

will find her facing men of all classes--ignorant and wise,

saints and sinners. I do not know anywhere that woman is not. It

is too late now to say that she can not go to the ballot-box. Go

back to Turkey, and shut her up in a harem; go back to Greece,

and shut her up in the private apartments of women; go back to

the old Oriental phases of civilization, that never allowed

woman's eyes to light a man's pathway, unless he owned her, and

you are consistent; but you see, we have broken down the bulwark,

centuries ago. You know they used to let a man be hung in public,

and said that it was for the sake of the example. They got

ashamed of it, and banished the gallows to the jail-yard, and

allowed only twelve men to witness an execution. It is too late

to say that you hang men for the example, because the example you

are ashamed to have public can not be a wholesome example. So it

is with this question of woman. You have granted so much, that

you have left yourselves no ground to stand on. My dear, delicate

friend, you are out of your sphere; you ought to be in Turkey. My

dear, religiously, scrupulously fashionable, exquisitely anxious

hearer, fearful lest your wife, or daughter, or sister shall be

sullied by looking into your neighbors' faces at the ballot-box,

you do not belong to the century that has ballot-boxes. You

belong to the century of Tamerlane and Timour the Tartar; you

belong to China, where the women have no feet, because it is not

meant that they shall walk. You belong anywhere but in America;

and if you want an answer, walk down Broadway, and meet a hundred

thousand petticoats, and they are a hundred thousand answers; for

if woman can walk the streets, she can go to the ballot-box, and

any reason of indelicacy that forbids the one covers the other.

Men say, "Why do you come here? What good are you going to do?

You do nothing but talk." Oh, yes, we have done a great deal

besides talk! But suppose we had done nothing but talk? I saw a

poor man the other day, and said he (speaking of a certain period

in his life), "I felt very friendless and alone--I had only God

with me"; and he seemed to think that was not much. And so thirty

millions of thinking, reading people are constantly throwing it

in the teeth of reformers that they rely upon talk! What is talk?

Why, it is the representative of brains. And what is the

characteristic glory of the nineteenth century? That it is ruled

by brains, and not by muscle; that rifles are gone by, and ideas

have come in; and, of course, in such an era, talk is the

fountain-head of all things. But we have done a great deal. In

the first place, you will meet dozens of men who say, "Oh,

woman's right to property, the right of the wife to her own

earnings, we grant that; we always thought that; we have had that

idea for a dozen years." I met a man the other day in the cars,

and we read the statute of your New York Legislature. "Why," said

he, "that is nothing; I have assented to that for these fifteen

years." All I could say to that was this: "This agitation has

either given you the idea, or it has given you the courage to

utter it, for nobody ever heard it from you until to-day." ...

What do we toil for? Why, my friends, I do not care much whether

a woman actually goes to the ballot-box and votes--that is a

slight matter; and I shall not wait, either, to know whether

every woman in this audience wants to vote. Some of you were

saying to-day, in these very seats, coming here out of mere

curiosity, to see what certain fanatics could find to say, "Why,

I don't want any more rights; I have got rights enough." Many a

lady, whose husband is what he ought to be, whose father is what

fathers ought to be, feeling no want unsupplied, is ready to say,

"I have all the rights I want." So the daughter of Louis

Sixteenth, in the troublous time of 1791, when somebody told her

that the people were starving in the streets of Paris, exclaimed,

"What fools! I would eat bread first!" Thus wealth, comfort, and

ease say, "I have rights enough." Nobody doubted it, madam! But

the question is not of you; the question is of some houseless

wife of a drunkard; the question is of some ground-down daughter

of toil, whose earnings are filched from her by the rum debts of

a selfishness which the law makes to have a right over her, in

the person of a husband. The question is not of you, it is of

some friendless woman of twenty, standing at the door of the

world, educated, capable, desirous of serving her time and her

race, and saying, "Where shall I use these talents? How shall I

earn bread?" And orthodox society, cabined and cribbed in St.

Paul, cries out, "Go sew, jade! We have no other channel for you.

Go to the needle, or wear yourself to death as a

school-mistress." We come here to endeavor to convince you, and

so to shape our institutions that public opinion, following in

the wake, shall be willing to open channels for the agreeable and

profitable occupation of women as much as for men. People blame

the shirt-makers and tailors because they pay two cents where

they ought to pay fifty. It is not their fault. They are nothing

but the weathercocks, and society is the wind. Trade does not

grow out of the Sermon on the Mount; merchants never have any

hearts, they have only ledgers; two per cent. a month is their

Sermon on the Mount, and a balance on the wrong side of the

ledger is their demonstration. (Laughter). Nobody finds fault

with them for it. Everything according to the law of its life. A

man pays as much for making shirts or coats as it is necessary to

pay, and he would be a fool and a bankrupt if he paid any more.

He needs only a hundred workwomen; there are a thousand women

standing at his door saying, "Give us work; and if it is worth

ten cents to do it, we will do it for two"; and a hundred get the

work, and nine hundred are turned into the street, to drag down

this city into the pit that it deserves. (Loud applause).

Now, what is the remedy? To take that tailor by the throat, and

gibbet him in _The New York Tribune_? Not at all; it does the

women no good, and he does not deserve it. I will tell you what

is to be done. Behind the door at which those women stand asking

for work, on one side stands an orthodox disciple of St. Paul,

and on the other a dainty exquisite; and the one says, it is not

religious, and the other says, it is not fashionable, for woman

to be anything but a drudge. Now, strangle the one in his own

creed, and smother the other in his own perfumes, and give to

those thousand women freedom to toil. Let public opinion only

grant that, like their thousand brothers, those thousand women

may go out, and wherever they find work to do, do it, without a

stigma being set upon them. Let the educated girl of twenty have

the same liberty to use the pen, to practice law, to write

books, to attend the telegraph, to go into the artist's studio,

to serve in a library, to tend in a gallery of art, to do

anything that her brother can do. St. Paul is dead and rotten,

and ought to be forgotten--(Applause, laughter, and a few

hisses)--so far as this doctrine goes, mark you! for his is the

noblest figure in all history, except that of Christ, the

broadest and most masterly intellect of any age; but he was a Jew

and not a Christian; he lived under Jewish civilization and not

ours, and was speaking by his own light, and not by inspiration

of God.

This is all we claim; and we claim the ballot for this reason;

the moment you give woman power, that moment men will see to it

that she has the way cleared for her. There are two sources of

power: one is civil, the ballot; the other is physical, the

rifle. I do not believe that the upper classes--education,

wealth, aristocracy, conservatism--the men that are in--ever

yielded, except to fear. I think the history of the race shows

that the upper classes never granted a privilege to the lower out

of love. As Jeremy Bentham says, "The upper classes never yielded

a privilege without being bullied out of it." When man rises in

revolution, with the sword in his right hand, trembling wealth

and conservatism say, "What do you want? Take it; but grant me my

life." The Duke of Tuscany, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has told

us, swore to a dozen constitutions when the Tuscans stood armed

in the streets of Florence, and he forgot them when the Austrians

came in and took the rifles out of the Tuscans' hands. You must

force the upper classes to do justice by physical or some other

power. The age of physical power is gone, and we want to put

ballots into the hands of women....

Political economy puts in every man's hand, by the labor of half

a day, money enough to be drunk a week. There is one temptation,

dragging down the possibility of self-government into the pit of

imbruted humanity; and on the other side, is that hideous problem

of modern civilized life--prostitution--born of orthodox scruples

and aristocratic fastidiousness--born of that fastidious denial

of the right of woman to choose her own work, and, like her

brother, to satiate her ambition, her love of luxury, her love of

material gratifications, by fair wages for fair work. As long as

you deny it, as long as the pulpit covers with its fastidious

orthodoxy this question from the consideration of the public, it

is but a concealed brothel, although it calls itself an orthodox

pulpit. (Applause and hisses). I know what I say; your hisses can

not change it. Go, clean out the Gehenna of New York! (Applause).

Go, sweep the Augean stable that makes New York the lazar-house

of corruption! You know that on one side or the other of these

temptations lies very much of the evil of modern civilized life.

You know that before them, statesmanship folds its hands in

despair. Here is a method by which to take care of at least one.

Give men fair wages, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will

disdain to steal. The way to prevent dishonesty is to let every

man have a field for his work, and honest wages; the way to

prevent licentiousness is to give to woman's capacity free play.

Give to the higher powers activity, and they will choke down the

animal. The man who loves thinking, disdains to be the victim of

appetite. It is a law of our nature. Give a hundred women honest

wages for capacity and toil, and ninety-nine out of the hundred

will disdain to win it by vice. _That_ is a cure for

licentiousness. (Applause).

I wish to put into our civil life the element of woman's right to

shape the laws, for all our social life copies largely from the

statute-book. Let woman dictate at the capital, let her say to

Wall Street, "My votes on finance are to make stocks rise and

fall," and Wall Street will say to Columbia College, "Open your

classes to woman; it needs be that she should learn." The moment

you give her the ballot, you take bonds of wealth and fashion and

conservatism, that they will educate this power, which is holding

their interest in its right hand. I want to spike the gun of

selfishness; or rather, I want to double-shot the cannon of

selfishness. Let Wall Street say, "Look you! whether the New York

Central stock shall have a toll placed upon it, whether my

million shares shall be worth sixty cents in the market or

eighty, depends upon whether certain women up there at Albany

know the laws of trade and the secrets of political economy"--and

Wall Street will say, "Get out of the way, Dr. Adams!--absent

yourself, Dr. Spring!--we don't care for Jewish prejudices; these

women must have education!" (Loud applause). Show me the

necessity in civil life, and I will find you forty thousand

pulpits that will say St. Paul meant just that. (Renewed

applause). Now, I am orthodox; I believe in the Bible; I

reverence St. Paul; I believe his was the most masterly intellect

that God ever gave to the race; I believe he was the connecting

link, the bridge, by which the Asiatic and European mind were

joined; I believe that Plato ministers at his feet; but, after

all, he was a man, and not God. (Applause). He was limited, and

made mistakes. You can not anchor this western continent to the

Jewish footstool of St. Paul; and, after all, that is the

difficulty--religious prejudice. It is not fashion--we shall beat

it; it is not the fastidiousness of the exquisite--we shall

smother it; it is the religious prejudice, borrowed from a

mistaken interpretation of the New Testament. That is the real

Gibraltar with which we are to grapple, and my argument with that

is simply this: You left it when you founded a republic; you left

it when you inaugurated Western civilization; we must grow out of

one root.

Let me, in closing, show you, by one single anecdote, how mean a

thing a man can be. You have heard of Mrs. Norton, "the woman

Byron," as critics call her--the granddaughter of Sheridan, and

the one on whose shoulders his mantle has rested--a genius by

right of inheritance and by God's own gift. Perhaps you may

remember that when the Tories wanted to break down the reform

administration of Lord Melbourne, they brought her husband to

feign to believe his wife unfaithful, and to sue her before a

jury. He did so, brought an action, and an English jury said she

was innocent; and his own counsel has since admitted, in writing,

under his own signature, that during the time he prosecuted that

trial, the Honorable Mr. Norton (for so he is in the Herald's

Book) confessed all the time that he did not believe a word

against his wife, and knew she was innocent. She is a writer. The

profits of her books, by the law of England, belong to her

husband. She has not lived with him--of course not, for she is a

woman!--since that trial; but the brute goes every six months to

John Murray, and eats the profits of the brain of the wife whom

he tried to disgrace. (Loud cries of "shame," "shame"). And the

law of England says it is right; the orthodox pulpit says, "If

you change it, it will be the pulling down of the stars and St.

Paul." I do not believe that the Honorable Mr. Norton is half as

near to the mind of St. Paul as the Honorable Mrs. Norton. I go,

therefore, for woman having her right to her brain, to her hands,

to her toil, to her ballot. "The tools to him that can use

them"--and let God settle the rest. If He made it just that we

should have democratic institutions, then He made it just that

everybody who is to suffer under the law should have a voice in

making it; and if it is indelicate for woman to vote, then let

Him stop making women (applause and laughter), because

republicanism and such women are not consistent. I say it

reverently; and I only say it to show you the absurdity. Why, my

dear man and woman, we are not to help God govern the world by

telling lies! He can take care of it Himself. If He made it just,

you may be certain that He saw to it that it should be delicate;

and you need not insert your little tiny roots of fastidious

delicacy into the great giant rifts of God's world--they are only

in the way. (Applause).

The first evening session was called to order at 7-1/2 o'clock. The

President in the chair. The audience was very large, the hall being

uncomfortably full, and the attention unremitting and profound. The

most excellent order was preserved; the meeting, in this respect,

furnishing a marked and gratifying contrast with the evening sessions

of the last two years at Mozart Hall.

Mrs. Rose, from the Business Committee, presented a series of

resolutions[167], which were read by Miss Anthony. Elizabeth Cady

Stanton was the first speaker of the evening. By particular request

she gave the same address recently delivered before the Legislature at

Albany, and was followed by Ernestine L. Rose with one of her logical

and convincing arguments.

Susan B. Anthony then read the following letters:

LETTER FROM HON. GERRIT SMITH.

PETERBORO, _May 3, 1860_.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON:

MY VERY DEAR COUSIN:--It is proper that one of the first letters

which I write in my new life, should be to the cousin whose views

are most in harmony with my own. I call it my new life, because I

have come up into it from the gates of death. May it prove a new

life also, in being a far better and nobler one than that which I

had hitherto lived!

I wake up with joy to see my old fellow-laborers still in their

work of honoring God, in benefiting and blessing man. Your own

zeal for truth is unabated. I see that you are still laboring to

free the slave from his chains, and woman from her social, civil,

and political disabilities; and to preserve both man and woman

from defiling and debasing themselves with intoxicating liquors

and tobacco. Precious reforms are these which have enlisted your

powers! It is true that they do not cover the whole ground of

religious duty. But it is also true that the religion, which,

like the current one, opposes or ignores them all, is spurious;

and so, too, that the religion which opposes or ignores any one

of them is always sadly defective, if not always spurious.

Please add the inclosed draft for $25 to the fund for serving the

cause of woman's rights. To no better cause can money, time, or

talents be appropriated. I am in high, health, compared with any

I have enjoyed since the succession of my frightful diseases,

begun two and a half years ago. My nerves, however, are still

weak, and most of the year 1859 is still full of confusion and

darkness to me.

Your friend and cousin,

GERRIT SMITH.

LETTER FROM FRANCIS JACKSON, ESQ.

BOSTON, _May 6, 1860_.

LUCY STONE:

DEAR FRIEND:--I intend to be at the annual meeting of the

American Anti-Slavery Society, but my engagements are such that I

shall not stop long enough in New York to attend your meeting of

Woman's Rights. I herewith inclose you $20 to help the cause

along.

FRANCIS JACKSON.

Hon. Erastus D. Culver, of Brooklyn, New York, being present among

that portion of the audience seated upon the platform, was recognized

and loudly called for, and came forward in response to the call, and

spoke as follows:

Mrs. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN:--They used to have, in old

times, in the country where I was brought up, a minister, who,

after delivering his sermon, would call upon some brother to get

up and make the application. Now, I want to give you an

application of what I have heard to-night, and there seems to be

a sort of providence in it. This very day, since I opened my

court this morning, three cases have come in review before me,

each one of them directly connected with the subject matter of

this evening's deliberations, and with the law which has been

alluded to to-night. The first was the case of a woman who had

brought a suit, in conjunction with her husband (as she had to

do, as the law was) against the city of Brooklyn, for personal

injuries, received by falling into a hole; and on the first

trial, it was found very difficult to make out the case, because

we were obliged to exclude the woman as a witness. If her husband

had fallen into that hole, and hurt his side, making him a

cripple for life, he might have brought a suit, and he would have

been by law a competent witness: but his wife was not; and as he

was not with her at the time of the accident, of course he could

not testify. To-day the case came on again, and they were making

a very poor show at proving the accident, when the lawyer for the

lady said, "I will offer the lady as a witness." The other lawyer

started up (he is an old fogy, who does not keep up with the

times) and said, "She is a party out of sight in law; in law, she

is one of the invisibles"; when, to my great surprise and joy

(for I had lost track of it myself) the lady's lawyer pulled out

from his pocket a slip from a newspaper, which contained the

noble law of the 20th of March, 1860, and that law says that "any

married woman may bring and maintain an action in her own name

for damages against any person or body corporate for any injury

to her person or character." That obviated the difficulty. The

law was handed to the opposite lawyer, and when he had read it

through, with a frown on his face, he said, ill-naturedly, "If

your honor please, it is so; they have emancipated the women from

all obligations to their husbands." Now, just look at that old

presumption of the law, that a married woman could not tell the

truth, even in a matter about which she knew better than any one

else, on the ground that she was a _feme covert_, and was

_nil_--nothing!

That was one case. Another was that of a woman who made a bitter

complaint against her husband, saying that he had become a

drunkard, and was squandering her estate, and threatened to take

their two children away. I signed the writ, and the husband and

two children were brought in. He addressed the Court in his own

defence, and I have not heard such eloquence in court for many a

year. He told how he loved his wife, how devoted he was, and

that it would ruin him for ever to be separated from her. He said

to his lawyer, "Do you keep still; I can talk better than you

can." "Now," said he to the Court, "I adjure you, by the feelings

of a father and a man, restore to me my wife and children! Do not

disgrace me in this way!" All present were deeply affected, and

it seemed as if he had carried the people with him, whether he

had the Court or not. His speech sounded admirably; but I am

sorry to say, that when his wife's turn came, she had not spoken

five minutes before she had taken the wind entirely out of his

sails. "I was married," she said, "eleven years ago, and not a

fortnight after, he beat me, and left his bruises upon me. He has

pawned all my clothes, everything I have in the house has been

pledged, and I am left destitute; and here, your honor, are the

wounds upon my head, here are the bruises that he has left. I can

not live with him any longer; I can not be reconciled, until he

abjures rum and comes home resolved to live a sober life."

"Well," said the husband's lawyer, "we claim our paramount

rights--that the father shall have the custody of the children."

Then came up this very law again, and this lawyer was as much

surprised as the one to whom I first referred. There is a clause

in that law which declares that, from this time forward, there

shall be no such thing as "paramount rights." It is declared in

that statute that from this day "every married woman is

constituted and declared to be the joint guardian of her

children, with equal powers, rights, and duties in regard to

them, with her husband." In view of that law, I said, "I can not

take the children away from the mother; she has just as much

right to them as her husband, and if she says she must have them,

I will let her have them." (Loud applause).

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have never been identified with this

Woman's Rights movement, but I tell you what it is, we have got

to admit some things. We have got to admit that these

indefatigable laborers, amid obloquy and reproach, in Church and

State, by buffoons and by men, have at last set the under-current

in motion. The statute-book is their vindication to-night. The

last measure passed has relieved woman, to a great extent, from

the disabilities under which she was placed. I am one who

believes that she may go forward. There will come a time,

friends, when we shall see the ballot-box open, and one

particular department (as we have at the post-office) where the

ladies will all march up and vote. (Applause, and a few hisses).

Now, you men that hiss, you would like to have them help you

elect your candidate this year, wouldn't you? I wish most

sincerely that they could help elect our Republican candidate.

(Applause). There is to be a still further advance in this

matter. I do not think it at all degrading to say, that there

will come a time when ladies will sit in the jury-box, to pass

upon certain cases that come particularly within their sphere;

and I will say (now that I am off the bench) that they would make

better judges than some who are on the benches now. (Laughter and

applause).

Mrs. ROSE added: I have been most happy to hear the remarks of

Judge Culver. Who can doubt of our success, when judges, and

noble ones, too--for it is only noble ones who are ready to

identify themselves with this cause before it becomes fully

successful--come forward to endorse our movement! All we now have

to do is, to continue in the good cause, and, depend upon it, the

time will come when we shall look back to this last spring's

enactment of the Legislature, as the commencement of the real

"good time coming." But we have yet some duties to perform. What

we have gained, has not been gained without labor. Freedom, my

friends, does not come from the clouds, like a meteor; it does

not bloom in one night; it does not come without great efforts

and great sacrifices; all who love liberty, have to labor for it.

We expect that from this hour, you will all help us to work out

that glorious problem, whether or not woman can govern herself

quite as well as man can govern her. Give us the elective

franchise, and we ask for no more. When we have obtained that, it

shall be our fault if we do not take all the rights we now claim.

(Applause).

ELIZABETH JONES said: The adoption of the plans now proposed

would place woman above the necessity of any mercenary marriages.

She could leave her father's home if she didn't like it, and

engage in business and support herself. Who cared for the husband

of Jenny Lind, or of Mrs. Norton? It was not necessary for

Florence Nightingale, Harriet Hosmer, or Elizabeth Blackwell to

marry to secure the world's consideration. The wife should have

equal and joint proprietorship with her husband. Two brothers,

John and Henry, go to California and form a partnership; John

cooks while Henry digs. Henry finds one day a lump of gold worth

a hundred dollars. Will he pay John fifty cents for cooking, and

take the rest himself? Of course not; he will divide with him. So

the husband should regard the property that he accumulates as

owned by his wife jointly and equally with himself. Woman would

have her rights, let man do what he might. She asked no rights

from man, for man had none to give her--none to spare from

himself. Satan promised Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and

the glory of them, if He would fall down and worship him; but it

was well known that the poor devil had not a foot to give. And so

man could give no rights to woman. She was born with rights, and

only wanted man to recognize them. Her purpose was to demand them

persistently, or, if need be, like the Prince of Orange, die in

the last ditch before she surrendered them. (Applause).

Rev. Samuel Longfellow, of Brooklyn, N. Y., brother of the poet, was

next introduced, and spoke as follows:

Mrs. PRESIDENT:--It might seem, that on a platform like this,

when a woman speaks, her presence is not merely a plea and an

argument, but also a proof. When a woman speaks, and speaks well,

speaks so as to interest and move and persuade men, there is no

need of any argument back of that to prove that she has the

liberty and the right, and that it is a part of her sphere to do

it. She has done it; and that of itself is the whole

argument--both premise and conclusion in one. And I think if

there were none but men present here, it would be better that

only women should speak; for there is a subtle power which God

implanted from the first in woman over man, so that the thought

of her mind and the tone of her voice are more powerful over us

than almost any man, be he eloquent as he may; but not only men

are here, but women, also; and as our friend who has just spoken

has addressed herself to men, I will address myself to women.

I have often thought that the obstacle in the way of a full

allowance and recognition of woman's right to stand side by side

with man in all the departments of life, and to add her feminine

influence and fiber twined in with man's influence and fiber, in

all things that are thought and done, that the obstacle lay more

in woman than in man. I have often thought that men were more

willing to accept these ideas and grant these claims than women

were even to make the claims for themselves; and I have no doubt

that those women who have labored, through so much difficulty,

through so much scorn and obloquy, in behalf of these simple

rights, will tell you that they have often found the greatest

opposition among their own sex.

The simple proposition which, it seems to me, includes the whole

of this matter, is, what I should call a self-evident

truth--that, in all departments of life, men and women, made from

the first to be co-mates and partners, should stand side by side,

and work hand to hand. Not because men and women are identical,

not because they are not different, but because they are

different; because each has a special quality running through the

whole organization of the man and the woman, which quality is

needed to make a complete manhood and womanhood. And then there

is another proposition, which is this: that whatever any human

being can do well, that being has a right to do, and the ability

of any person marks the sphere of that person. ("Hear"--"hear").

This, I say, I count to be strictly a self-evident proposition.

(Applause). If you want to know what the level of water is at any

particular spot upon the face of the earth, you do not force the

water up with a force-pump, you do not build a great reservoir

with high stone walls, to hold it, you simply leave it alone, and

it finds its level. So, if you want to know what is the true

sphere of man or woman, just leave the man or the woman alone,

and the natural law, and the divine law, which can not be broken,

and which are as sure in the moral and human world as they are in

the external world, will settle the matter. If you want to know,

really and sincerely, what woman's sphere is, leave her

unhampered and untrammeled, and her own powers will find that

sphere. She may make mistakes, and try, as man often does, to do

things which she can not, but the experiment will settle the

matter; and nothing can be more absurd than for man, especially,

_a priori_, to establish the limits which shall bound woman's

sphere, or for woman, as a mere matter of speculation, to debate

what her sphere shall be, since the natural laws are revealed,

not to speculation, but to action.

The obstacle to the progress of the simple ideas which underlie

this movement and to their being carried out into practice, I

take to be nothing else than this--the _vis inertiæ_ of

prejudice, the dead-weight of the customary and familiar--that

which has been; and that is simply the dead-weight which hangs

upon the wheels of every movement of reform. A thing has not not

been, it is not customary, it is strange, it disturbs our

ordinary modes of thought, and we will have nothing to do with

it. When you are driving with your carriage along the track of

the horse-railroad, your wheels run very smoothly; but if you are

obliged to turn out, it wrenches the wheels and jars your

carriage; and the deeper the ruts, the more disturbance and

trouble will you have if you are obliged to move out of them. We

all move in the ruts of habit and custom; and it disturbs and

troubles us to be asked to move out of them--to do or think

anything unusual. This _vis inertiae_ is what stands in the way,

first and most of all, of the success of this movement, of the

reception of these ideas, as of every other movement of reform.

And this dead-weight of prejudice, this _vis inertiae_ of old and

traditional thought, is concentrated in this phrase, uttered with

tones of indifference or with tones of self-satisfaction and

pride, "I think, for my part, that woman's sphere is home." This

phrase you hear everywhere--in the parlors, in the streets, in

conventions, and in pulpits, and read in books--"Woman's sphere

is home!" (Applause). "Well, is it not?" some one asks among you,

perhaps. Now, I have no desire to deny that the home is for

woman, as for man, the most noble sphere of life. I am sure that

there is not one who will stand upon this platform, or speak or

write in this cause, who will deny that; not one but will declare

that they count home a sacred and noble sphere for woman, as for

man--a sphere for grand and high influence, for noble

consecration and devoted work; whether it be the simple duties of

housekeeping, which a high and cultivated soul can make beautiful

by the spirit in which they are done--or whether it be the care

of children and the training up of the youthful mind into noble

thought and preparation for noble action, which is a sphere so

high, that none of us, perhaps, know how high it is--or whether

it be as the friend and comforter, encourager and inspirer, to

all things noble in thought and grand in action, of man. But if

home be the sphere of woman--as none of us deny or doubt for a

moment--if it be a sphere for woman high and noble, and to some

altogether sufficient to bound their capacities and bound their

desires, it is also a sphere for man--a sphere which he

altogether too much neglects, not knowing how high and noble it

is, and that his duty lies at home, however much he ignores it,

with his wife and with his children. But when it is said that

home is woman's only sphere--and that is what is meant--it is

simply a mistake; it is simply a narrow statement. Take the very

woman who says this. As she passes along the street, she sees a

placard for a Woman's Rights meeting, and with scornful lip she

says, "I think woman's sphere is home"--and goes promenading up

and down the street to meet acquaintances, and spends all the

morning in shopping--because woman's sphere is home! (Applause

and laughter). And after dinner, she says to her husband, "Where

shall we go this evening?" "I think we will go to the opera," he

says; and so she leaves the children with the servant, and spends

half the night at the opera, because woman's sphere is home!

(Laughter). On Sunday she goes to church morning and evening,

because woman's sphere is home! and during the week goes to

concerts and lectures and balls, perhaps, because woman's sphere

is home! This is the answer to be given to all those who claim

that woman can do nothing but attend to household affairs, or to

those duties which are called especially the duties of home. No

woman attends to these utterly. No woman need neglect the duties

of home in order to fulfill duties in a wider sphere. It takes as

much time to sit and hear a lecture as to stand and deliver it;

to sit and hear a concert as to stand before the audience and

sing. There is time enough, and if one has a talent for either,

that is the sphere for him or her.

But when this claim is made that woman's sphere is at home, it is

quite forgotten how many women there are who have not imposed

upon them the cares of a home; what numbers there are who are not

at the head of families; what numbers there are who have not

these domestic ties to call upon them for effort; and it is also

forgotten how many there are who can not possibly always remain

at home, because upon their going forth depends the getting of

the money that shall provide for the wants of the home--that

shall bring the clothing and the bread that are to supply the

home's outward wants. To do this, these women must go from their

homes; and oh! hundreds and thousands of working-women in this

city are women whose sphere can not be home alone. It is upon

this ground that there is pressed home upon us the consideration

of the demands for a wider sphere of work for woman, that she

shall not be cut off from this and that means of getting a

living, which are freely opened to man, but from which woman is

excluded, through prejudices and fears. Let the wide sphere of

work be opened to woman, that she may select from it, just as man

does, whatever her strength and skill are sufficient for her to

accomplish. She is not to be shut up, it is claimed, and justly,

to a few poor, small, and wretchedly-paid employments, by which

she can, with her own hands and skill, gain a living, but is to

be allowed and encouraged to open to herself every variety of

employment wherein she shall be paid an equal sum with that which

man is paid for doing the same work; a claim which has been too

long ignored and set aside, but which will press itself until its

manifest justice shall compel its admission. The woman who has

not the care of a family is to be encouraged to expand her

powers, her talents, and genius, and to apply them to the purpose

of securing a livelihood, without any obstacle whatever being put

in the way; for when we talk of man's sphere and woman's sphere,

it is all a farce. There is no one sphere fitted for all men, any

more than for all women. Some men can not make good business men,

and must fail if they try; and some men can not possibly write

books, or preach, or speak in public, and must fail if they try.

They do not try, because they have wisdom enough to know that

they could not succeed. So it will be with women. People commonly

think, that if you grant this claim of woman's right to make her

own sphere, that all women will immediately rush into public

speaking, and be crowding to the platform, or into the pulpit, or

writing books, or carving statues, or painting pictures. There is

not the slightest danger of that. Of course, if either of these

is the true sphere of any woman, she ought to go there; but those

who have not a talent for these things will not try them.

If the right to vote was granted to woman--from which I do not

see how we can escape--I do not suppose that all women would go

to the polls, for I know that many men do not, although they have

much to say about the great privilege which every man enjoys, of

having a voice in the government, and the responsibility of a

voter. Things would remain much as now if to-morrow every

obstacle were removed from woman's path. Only gradually would the

change occur, as individual after individual found larger room

for action than that in which she is now pent. As this discussion

has been going on, woman after woman has been enlarging the

sphere allowed her. Women write admirable books, paint admirable

pictures, chisel admirable statues, make most excellent and

well-instructed physicians. Women are doing everything which it

is now claimed they have the right to do, except voting, which

they are not yet permitted to do; and I am not sure, in regard to

that, that the best plan would not be, as our Platonic friend in

New England once said, for the women to go quietly and vote,

without waiting to be asked or told that they would be permitted

to do so. To be sure, he said, their votes could not be counted,

but there they would be, and they would have their force. He

thought that the moral influence of those votes would go a great

ways, and it is quite possible that they would have that effect.

But I hope, whether in that way or some other--perhaps before

that step is taken--men will be led to see, that in the sphere of

politics, as well as in the sphere of literature and art, woman's

influence is needed; and all the objections that are made to

woman's voting are of the most trivial character, that would not

stand a day before any serious desire that she should have her

simple right in this matter, so far as she chooses to claim it.

And her right lies simply in these old propositions, so dear to

our fathers--upon which they stood and fought an eight years'

war--"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and that "all

just powers of government are derived from the consent of the

governed." And there is nothing in these two propositions which

confines their application to man; there is nothing in them which

does not demand that woman should be included as well as man.

Wherever woman is taxed, she has a right to vote, by this

fundamental principle of our government; and wherever she is

legislated for and governed, she is entitled to a voice in that

legislation and government.

This is a very simple matter. To-day, it is only a question of

time, when, from a matter of speculation, it will become a matter

of fact, the details of which can be managed as well as anything

in the world. Women will not be obliged to enter into a scramble

with dirty and fighting men at the polls--though it is possible,

if she went where such men are, they would be put on their good

manners, and be as well-behaved as anybody; but she could have a

separate place to vote, and go to the polls as quietly, and with

as little loss of time, as she now goes to the post-office, or

walks the streets, where rough, rude men congregate, but where

she has enough room to go and purchase her silks and satins and

laces in Broadway. (Applause). I congratulate those who, taking

an interest in this cause, espoused it when it was a great cross

to bear--who took it up with the simple courage of woman, the

patient perseverance of woman, and have carried it through as far

as it has gone now--upon the advances which it has made, upon the

opening and enlightenment of the public mind, and upon its

favorable reception, spite of all the obstacles that still

remain. I bid them be of good cheer, and remember that the great

law of progress is a law of steps; so that we must needs all be

patient, while we must also all needs be persevering. It is but a

question of time and of steps. The great psalm of human progress

is (to borrow a phrase from the Hebrew Bible) a psalm of degrees.

By patient steps man rises out of falsehood into truth, out of

wrongs into rights. So it is with woman, as a part of humanity.

Let every woman be true to this as her mission; let no woman dare

to place any obstacle or coldness in the way of this movement;

but let all calmly consider it, hear the arguments that are made,

and allow them to have their full weight; look at the simple

facts, and decide. Then we may, perhaps, all of us live to see

the day when, throughout all the spheres of his life, and all

the departments of his action, side by side with man and the

manly quality, there shall be woman and the womanly quality, and

a new Eden begin on earth. (Applause).

The President said:--Before introducing the next speaker, I want to

express the gratitude which we women feel to Mr. Longfellow and the

other gentlemen who have identified themselves with an unpopular and

ridiculed cause. Permit me to say one word in relation to this matter

of woman's sphere. There is a lady in my neighborhood, who was

speaking to me not long since, in the most enthusiastic terms, of this

recent law that has passed through our Legislature, and of gratitude

toward Susan B. Anthony, through whose untiring exertions and

executive ability, aided by two or three other women, this law has

been secured. After she had expatiated for a while on this subject,

her husband said, "Miss Anthony had a great deal better have been at

home, taking care of her husband and children." Thank Heaven! there is

one woman who has leisure to care for others as well as herself.

(Applause).

Elizabeth Cady Stanton then presented a series of resolutions,[168] in

support of which she addressed the Convention as follows:

Mrs. PRESIDENT:--In our common law, in our whole system of

jurisprudence, we find man's highest idea of right. The object of

law is to secure justice. But inasmuch as fallible man is the

maker and administrator of law, we must look for many and gross

blunders in the application of its general principles to

individual cases.

The science of theology, of civil, political, moral, and social

life, all teach the common idea, that man ever has been, and ever

must be, sacrificed to the highest good of society; the one to

the many--the poor to the rich--the weak to the powerful--and all

to the institutions of his own creation. Look, what thunderbolts

of power man has forged in the ages for his own destruction!--at

the organizations to enslave himself! And through those times of

darkness, those generations of superstition, behold all along the

relics of his power and skill, that stand like mile-stones, here

and there, to show how far back man was great and glorious! Who

can stand in those vast cathedrals of the old world, as the

deep-toned organ reverberates from arch to arch, and not feel the

grandeur of humanity? These are the workmanship of him, beneath

whose stately dome the architect himself now bows in fear and

doubt, knows not himself, and knows not God--a mere slave to

symbols--and with holy water signs the Cross, whilst He who died

thereon declared man God.

I repudiate the popular idea of man's degradation and total

depravity. I place man above all governments, all

institutions--ecclesiastical and civil--all constitutions and

laws. (Applause). It is a mistaken idea, that the same law that

oppresses the individual can promote the highest good of society.

The best interests of a community never can require the sacrifice

of one innocent being--of one sacred right. In the settlement,

then, of any question, we must simply consider the highest good

of the individual. It is the inalienable right of all to be

happy. It is the highest duty of all to seek those conditions in

life, those surroundings, which may develop what is noblest and

best, remembering that the lessons of these passing hours are not

for time alone, but for the ages of eternity. They tell us, in

that future home--the heavenly paradise--that the human family

shall be sifted out, and the good and pure shall dwell together

in peace. If that be the heavenly order, is it not our duty to

render earth as near like heaven as we may?

For years, there has been before the Legislature of this State a

variety of bills, asking for divorce in cases of drunkenness,

insanity, desertion, cruel and brutal treatment, endangering

life. My attention was called to this question very early in

life, by the sufferings of a friend of my girlhood, a victim of

one of those unfortunate unions, called marriage. What my great

love for that young girl, and my holy intuitions, then decided to

be right, has not been changed by years of experience,

observation, and reason. I have pondered well these things in my

heart, and ever felt the deepest interest in all that has been

written and said upon the subject, and the most profound respect

and loving sympathy for those heroic women, who, in the face of

law and public sentiment, have dared to sunder the unholy ties of

a joyless, loveless union.

If marriage is a human institution, about which man may

legislate, it seems but just that he should treat this branch of

his legislation with the same common-sense that he applies to all

others. If it is a mere legal contract, then should it be subject

to the restraints and privileges of all other contracts. A

contract, to be valid in law, must be formed between parties of

mature age, with an honest intention in said parties to do what

they agree. The least concealment, fraud, or deception, if

proved, annuls the contract. A boy can not contract for an acre

of land, or a horse, until he is twenty-one, but he may contract

for a wife at fourteen. If a man sell a horse, and the purchaser

find in him great incompatibility of temper--a disposition to

stand still when the owner is in haste to go--the sale is null

and void, and the man and his horse part company. But in

marriage, no matter how much fraud and deception are practiced,

nor how cruelly one or both parties have been misled; no matter

how young, inexperienced, or thoughtless the parties, nor how

unequal their condition and position in life, the contract can

not be annulled. Think of a husband telling a young and trusting

girl, but one short month his wife, that he married her for her

money; that those letters so precious to her, that she had read

and re-read, and kissed and cherished, were written by another;

that their splendid home, of which, on their wedding-day, her

father gave him the deed, is already in the hands of his

creditors; that she must give up the elegance and luxury that now

surround her, unless she can draw fresh supplies of money to meet

their wants! When she told the story of her wrongs to me--the

abuse to which she was subject, and the dread in which she

lived--I impulsively urged her to fly from such a monster and

villain, as she would before the hot breath of a ferocious beast

of the wilderness. (Applause). And she did fly; and it was well

with her. Many times since, as I have felt her throbbing heart

against my own, she has said, "Oh, but for your love and

sympathy, your encouragement, I should never have escaped from

that bondage. Before I could, of myself, have found courage to

break those chains my heart would have broken in the effort."

Marriage, as it now exists, must seem to all of you a mere human

institution. Look through the universe of matter and mind--all

God's arrangements are perfect, harmonious, and complete! There

is no discord, friction, or failure in His eternal plans.

Immutability, perfection, beauty, are stamped on all His laws.

Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the

center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all

thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and

woe--the open sesame to every human soul. Where two beings are

drawn together, by the natural laws of likeness and affinity,

union and happiness are the result. Such marriages might be

Divine. But how is it now? You all know our marriage is, in many

cases, a mere outward tie, impelled by custom, policy, interest,

necessity; founded not even in friendship, to say nothing of

love; with every possible inequality of condition and

development. In these heterogeneous unions, we find youth and old

age, beauty and deformity, refinement and vulgarity, virtue and

vice, the educated and the ignorant, angels of grace and

goodness, with devils of malice and malignity: and the sum of all

this is human wretchedness and despair; cold fathers, sad

mothers, and hapless children, who shiver at the hearthstone,

where the fires of love have all gone out. The wide world, and

the stranger's unsympathizing gaze, are not more to be dreaded

for young hearts than homes like these. Now, who shall say that

it is right to take two beings, so unlike, and anchor them right

side by side, fast bound--to stay all time, until God shall

summon one away?

Do wise, Christian legislators need any arguments to convince

them that the sacredness of the family relation should be

protected at all hazards? The family, that great conservator of

national virtue and strength, how can you hope to build it up in

the midst of violence, debauchery, and excess? Can there be

anything sacred at that family altar, where the chief-priest who

ministers makes sacrifice of human beings, of the weak and the

innocent? where the incense offered up is not to the God of

justice and mercy, but to those heathen divinities, who best may

represent the lost man in all his grossness and deformity? Call

that sacred, where woman, the mother of the race--of a Jesus of

Nazareth--unconscious of the true dignity of her nature, of her

high and holy destiny, consents to live in legalized

prostitution!--her whole soul revolting at such gross

association!--her flesh shivering at the cold contamination of

that embrace, held there by no tie but the iron chain of the law,

and a false and most unnatural public sentiment? Call that

sacred, where innocent children, trembling with fear, fly to the

corners and dark places of the house, to hide themselves from the

wrath of drunken, brutal fathers, but, forgetting their past

sufferings, rush out again at their mother's frantic screams,

"Help, oh help"? Behold the agonies of those young hearts, as

they see the only being on earth they love, dragged about the

room by the hair of the head, kicked and pounded, and left half

dead and bleeding on the floor! Call that sacred, where fathers

like these have the power and legal right to hand down their

natures to other beings, to curse other generations with such

moral deformity and death?

Men and brethren, look into your asylums for the blind, the deaf

and dumb, the idiot, the imbecile, the deformed, the insane; go

out into the by-lanes and dens of this vast metropolis, and

contemplate that reeking mass of depravity; pause before the

terrible revelations made by statistics, of the rapid increase of

all this moral and physical impotency, and learn how fearful a

thing it is to violate the immutable laws of the beneficent Ruler

of the universe; and there behold the terrible retributions of

your violence on woman! Learn how false and cruel are those

institutions, which, with a coarse materialism, set aside those

holy instincts of the woman to bear no children but those of

love! In the best condition of marriage, as we now have it, to

woman comes all the penalties and sacrifices. A man, in the full

tide of business or pleasure, can marry and not change his life

one iota; he can be husband, father, and everything beside; but

in marriage, woman gives up all. Home is her sphere, her realm.

Well, be it so. If here you will make us all-supreme, take to

yourselves the universe beside; explore the North Pole; and, in

your airy car, all space; in your Northern homes and cloud-capt

towers, go feast on walrus flesh and air, and lay you down to

sleep your six months' night away, and leave us to make these

laws that govern the inner sanctuary of our own homes, and

faithful satellites we will ever be to the dinner-pot, the

cradle, and the old arm-chair. (Applause).

Fathers, do you say, let your daughters pay a life-long penalty

for one unfortunate step? How could they, on the threshold of

life, full of joy and hope, believing all things to be as they

seemed on the surface, judge of the dark windings of the human

soul? How could they foresee that the young man, to-day so noble,

so generous, would in a few short years be transformed into a

cowardly, mean tyrant, or a foul-mouthed, bloated drunkard? What

father could rest at his home by night, knowing that his lovely

daughter was at the mercy of a strong man drunk with wine and

passion, and that, do what he might, he was backed up by law and

public sentiment? The best interests of the individual, the

family, the State, the nation, cry out against these legalized

marriages of force and endurance. There can be no heaven without

love, and nothing is sacred in the family and home, but just so

far as it is built up and anchored in love. Our newspapers teem

with startling accounts of husbands and wives having shot or

poisoned each other, or committed suicide, choosing death rather

than the indissoluble tie; and, still worse, the living death of

faithless wives and daughters, from the first families in this

State, dragged from the privacy of home into the public prints

and courts, with all the painful details of sad, false lives.

What say you to facts like these? Now, do you believe, men and

women, that all these wretched matches are made in heaven? that

all these sad, miserable people are bound together by God? I know

Horace Greeley has been most eloquent, for weeks past, on the

holy sacrament of ill-assorted marriages; but let us hope that

all wisdom does not live, and will not die with Horace Greeley. I

think, if he had been married to _The New York Herald_, instead

of the Republican party, he would have found out some Scriptural

arguments against life-long unions, where great incompatibility

of temper existed between the parties. (Laughter and applause).

Our law-makers have dug a pit, and the innocent have fallen into

it; and now will you coolly cover them over with statute laws,

_Tribunes_, and Weeds,[169] and tell them to stay there and pay

the life-long penalty of having fallen in? Nero was thought the

chief of tyrants, because he made laws and hung them up so high

that his subjects could not read them, and then punished them for

every act of disobedience. What better are our Republican

legislators? The mass of the women of this nation know nothing

about the laws, yet all their specially barbarous legislation is

for woman. Where have they made any provision for her to learn

the laws? Where is the Law School for our daughters? where the

law office, the bar, or the bench, now urging them to take part

in the jurisprudence of the nation?

[Illustration: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON (with autograph).]

But, say you, does not separation cover all these difficulties?

No one objects to separation when the parties are so disposed.

But, to separation there are two very serious objections. First,

so long as you insist on marriage as a divine institution, as an

indissoluble tie, so long as you maintain your present laws

against divorce, you make separation, even, so odious, that the

most noble, virtuous, and sensitive men and women choose a life

of concealed misery, rather than a partial, disgraceful release.

Secondly, those who, in their impetuosity and despair, do, in

spite of public sentiment, separate, find themselves in their new

position beset with many temptations to lead a false, unreal

life. This isolation bears especially hard on woman. Marriage is

not all of life to man. His resources for amusement and

occupation are boundless. He has the whole world for his home.

His business, his politics, his club, his friendships with either

sex, can help to fill up the void made by an unfortunate union or

separation. But to woman, marriage is all and everything; her

sole object in life--that for which she is educated--the subject

of all her sleeping and her waking dreams. Now, if a noble,

generous girl of eighteen marries, and is unfortunate, because

the cruelty of her husband compels separation, in her dreary

isolation, would you drive her to a nunnery; and shall she be a

nun indeed? Her solitude is nothing less, as, in the present

undeveloped condition of woman, it is only through our fathers,

brothers, husbands, sons, that we feel the pulsations of the

great outer world.

One unhappy, discordant man or woman in a neighborhood, may mar

the happiness of all the rest. You can not shut up discord, any

more than you can small-pox. There can be no morality where there

is a settled discontent. A very wise father once remarked, that

in the government of his children, he forbade as few things as

possible; a wise legislation would do the same. It is folly to

make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in

the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws

that man can not and will not obey, serves to bring all law into

contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people

should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what

becomes of civil government? What do our present divorce laws

amount to? Those who wish to evade them have only to go into

another State to accomplish what they desire. If any of our

citizens can not secure their inalienable rights in New York

State, they may in Connecticut and Indiana. Why is it that all

agreements, covenants, partnerships, are left wholly at the

discretion of the parties, except the contract, which of all

others is considered most holy and important, both for the

individual and the race? This question of divorce, they tell us,

is hedged about with difficulties; that it can not be approached

with the ordinary rules of logic and common-sense. It is too

holy, too sacred to be discussed, and few seem disposed to touch

it. From man's standpoint, this may be all true, as to him they

say belong reason, and the power of ratiocination. Fortunately, I

belong to that class endowed with mere intuitions, a kind of

moral instinct, by which we feel out right and wrong. In

presenting to you, therefore, my views of divorce, you will of

course give them the weight only of the woman's intuitions. But

inasmuch as that is all God saw fit to give us, it is evident we

need nothing more. Hence, what we do perceive of truth must be as

reliable as what man grinds out by the longer process of reason,

authority, and speculation.

Horace Greeley, in his recent discussion with Robert Dale Owen,

said, this whole question has been tried, in all its varieties

and conditions, from indissoluble monogamic marriage down to free

love; that the ground has been all gone over and explored. Let me

assure him that but just one-half of the ground has been

surveyed, and that half but by one of the parties, and that party

certainly not the most interested in the matter. Moreover, there

is one kind of marriage that has not been tried, and that is, a

contract made by equal parties to live an equal life, with equal

restraints and privileges on either side. Thus far, we have had

the man marriage, and nothing more. From the beginning, man has

had the sole and whole regulation of the matter. He has spoken in

Scripture, he has spoken in law. As an individual, he has decided

the time and cause for putting away a wife, and as a judge and

legislator, he still holds the entire control. In all history,

sacred and profane, the woman is regarded and spoken of simply as

the toy of man--made for his special use--to meet his most gross

and sensuous desires. She is taken or put away, given or

received, bought or sold, just as the interest of the parties

might dictate. But the woman has been no more recognized in all

these transactions, through all the different periods and

conditions of the race, than if she had had no part nor lot in

the whole matter. The right of woman to put away a husband, be he

ever so impure, is never hinted at in sacred history. Even Jesus

himself failed to recognize the sacred rights of the holy mother

of the race. We can not take our gauge of womanhood from the

past, but from the solemn convictions of our own souls, in the

higher development of the race. No parchments, however venerable

with the mould of ages, no human institutions, can bound the

immortal wants of the royal sons and daughters of the great I

Am,--rightful heirs of the joys of time, and joint heirs of the

glories of eternity.

If in marriage either party claims the right to stand supreme, to

woman, the mother of the race, belongs the scepter and the crown.

Her life is one long sacrifice for man. You tell us that among

all womankind there is no Moses, Christ, or Paul,--no Michael

Angelo, Beethoven, or Shakspeare,--no Columbus, or Galileo,--no

Locke or Bacon. Behold those mighty minds attuned to music and

the arts, so great, so grand, so comprehensive,--these are our

great works of which we boast! Into you, O sons of earth, go all

of us that is immortal. In you center our very life-thoughts, our

hopes, our intensest love. For you we gladly pour out our heart's

blood and die, knowing that from our suffering comes forth a new

and more glorious resurrection of thought and life. (Loud

applause).

Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell followed, and prefaced her remarks by

saying: "Ours has always been a free platform. We have believed in the

fullest freedom of thought and in the free expression of individual

opinion. I propose to speak upon the subject discussed by our friend,

Mrs. Stanton. It is often said that there are two sides to every

question; but there are three sides, many sides, to every question.

Let Mrs. Stanton take hers; let Horace Greeley take his; I only ask

the privilege of stating mine. (Applause). I have embodied my thought,

hastily, in a series of resolutions,[170] and my remarks following

them will be very brief."

Mrs. Blackwell continued:

I believe that the highest laws of life are those which we find

written within our being; that the first moral laws which we are

to obey are the laws which God's own finger has traced upon our

own souls. Therefore, our first duty is to ourselves, and we may

never, under any circumstances, yield this to any other. I say we

are first responsible to ourselves, and to the God who has laid

the obligation upon us, to make ourselves the grandest we may.

Marriage grows out of the relations of parties. The law of our

development comes wholly from within; but the relation of

marriage supposes two persons as being united to each other, and

from this relation originates the law. Mrs. Stanton calls

marriage a "tie." No, marriage is a _relation_; and, once formed,

that relation continues as long as the parties continue with the

natures which they now essentially have. Let, then, the two

parties deliberately, voluntarily consent to enter into this

relation. It is one which, from its very nature, must be

permanent. Can the mother ever destroy the relation which exists

between herself and her child? Can the father annul the relation

which exists between himself and his child? Then, can the father

and mother annul the relation which exists between themselves,

the parents of the child? It can not be. The interests of

marriage are such that they can not be destroyed, and the only

question must be, "Has there been a marriage in this case or

not?" If there has, then the social law, the obligations growing

out of the relation, must be life-long.

But I assert that every woman, in the present state of society,

is bound to maintain her own independence and her own integrity

of character; to assert herself, earnestly and firmly, as the

equal of man, who is only her peer. This is her first right, her

first duty; and if she lives in a country where the law supposes

that she is to be subjected to her husband, and she consents to

this subjection, I do insist that she consents to degradation;

that this is sin, and it is impossible to make it other than sin.

True, in this State, and in nearly all the States, the idea of

marriage is that of subjection, in all respects, of the wife to

the husband--personal subjection, subjection in the rights over

their children and over their property; but this is a false

relation. Marriage is a union of equals--equal interests being

involved, equal duties at stake; and if any woman has been

married to a man who chooses to take advantage of the laws as

they now stand, who chooses to subject her, ignobly, to his will,

against her own, to take from her the earnings which belong to

the family, and to take from her the children which belong to the

family, I hold that that woman, if she can not, by her influence,

change this state of things, is solemnly obligated to go to some

State where she can be legally divorced; and then she would be as

solemnly bound to return again, and, standing for herself and her

children, regard herself, in the sight of God, as being bound

still to the father of those children, to work for his best

interests, while she still maintains her own sovereignty. Of

course, she must be governed by the circumstances of the case.

She may be obliged, for the protection of the family, to live on

one continent while her husband is on the other: but she is never

to forget that in the sight of God and her own soul, she is his

wife, and that she owes to him the wife's loyalty; that to work

for his redemption is her highest social obligation, and that to

teach her children to do the same is her first motherly duty.

Legal divorce may be necessary for personal and family

protection; if so, let every woman obtain it. This, God helping

me, is what I would certainly do, for under no circumstances will

I ever give my consent to be subjected to the will of another, in

any relation, for God has bidden me not to do it. But the idea of

most women is, that they must be timid, weak, helpless, and full

of ignoble submission. Only last week, a lady who has just been

divorced from her husband said to me--"I used to be required to

go into the field and do the hardest laborer's work, when I was

not able to do it; and my husband would declare, that if I would

not thus labor, I should not be allowed to eat, and I was obliged

to submit." I say the fault was as much with the woman as with

the man; she should never have submitted.

Our trouble is not with marriage as a relation between two; it is

all individual. We have few men or women fit to be married. They

neither fully respect themselves and their own rights and duties,

nor yet those of another. They have no idea how noble, how

godlike is the relation which ought to exist between the husband

and wife.

Tell me, is marriage to be merely a contract--something entered

into for a time, and then broken again--or is the true marriage

permanent? One resolution read by Mrs. Stanton said that, as men

are incompetent to select partners in business, teachers for

their children, ministers of their religion, or makers,

adjudicators, or administrators of their laws, and as the same

weakness and blindness must attend in the selection of

matrimonial partners, the latter and most important contract

should no more be perpetual than either or all of the former. I

do not believe that, rightly understood, she quite holds to that

position herself. Marriage must be either permanent, or capable

of being any time dissolved. Which ground shall we take? I insist

that, from the nature of things, marriage must be as permanent

and indissoluble as the relation of parent and child. If so, let

us legislate toward the right. Though evils must sometimes

result, we are still to seek the highest law of the relation.

Self-devotion is always sublimely beautiful, but the law has no

right to require either a woman to be sacrificed to any man, or a

man to be sacrificed to any woman, or either to the good of

society; but if either chooses to devote himself to the good of

the other, no matter how low that other may have fallen, no

matter how degraded he may be, let the willing partner strive to

lift him up, not by going down and sitting side by side with

him--that is wrong--but by steadily trying to win him back to the

right: keeping his own sovereignty, but trying to redeem the

fallen one as long as life shall endure. I do not wish to go to

the other state of being, and state what shall be our duty there,

but I do say, that where there is sin and suffering in this

universe of ours, we may none of us sit still until we have

overcome that sin and suffering. Then if my husband was wretched

and degraded in this life, I believe God would give me strength

to work for him while life lasted. I would do that for the lowest

drunkard in the street, and certainly I would do as much for my

husband. I believe that the greatest boon of existence is the

privilege of working for those who are oppressed and fallen; and

those who have oppressed their own natures are those who need the

most help. My great hope is, that I may be able to lift them

upwards. The great responsibility that has been laid upon me is

the responsibility never to sit down and sing to myself psalms of

happiness and content while anybody suffers. (Applause). Then, if

I find a wretched man in the gutter, and feel that, as a human

sister, I must go and lift him up, and that I can never enjoy

peace or rest until I have thus redeemed him and brought him out

of his sins, shall I, if the man whom I solemnly swore to love,

to associate with in all the interests of home and its holiest

relations--shall I, if he falls into sin, turn him off, and go on

enjoying life, while he is sunk in wretchedness and sin? I will

not do it. To me there is a higher idea of life. If, as an

intelligent human being, I promised to co-work with him in all

the higher interests of life, and if he proves false, I will not

turn from him, but I must seek first to regenerate him, the

nearest and dearest to me, as I would work, secondly, to save my

children, who are next, and then my brothers, my sisters, and the

whole human family. (Applause).

Mrs. Stanton asks, "Would you send a young girl into a nunnery,

when she has made a mistake?" Does Mrs. Stanton not know that

nunneries belong to a past age, that people who had nothing to do

might go there and try to expiate their own sins? I would teach

the young girl a higher way. I do not say to her, "If you have

foolishly united yourself to another" (not "if you have been tied

by the law"; for, remember, it was not the law that tied her; she

said, "I will do it," and the law said, "So let it be!")--"sunder

the bond"; but I say to her, that her duty is to reflect, "Now

that I see my mistake, I will commence being true to myself; I

will become a true unit, strong and noble in myself; and if I can

never make our union a true one, I will work toward that good

result, I will live for this great work--for truth and all its

interests." Let me tell you, if she is not great enough to do

this, she is not great enough to enter into any union!

Look at those who believe in thus easily dissolving the marriage

obligation! In very many cases they can not be truly married, or

truly happy in this relation, because there is something

incompatible with it in their own natures. It is not always so;

but when one feels that it is a relation easily to be dissolved,

of course, incompatibility at once seems to arise in the other,

and every difficulty that occurs, instead of being overlooked, as

it ought to be, in a spirit of forgiveness, is magnified, and the

evil naturally increased. We purchase a house, the deed is put

into our hands, and we take possession. We feel at once that it

is really very convenient. It suits us, and we are surprised that

we like it so much better than we supposed. The secret is, that

it is our house, and until we are ready to part with it, we make

ourselves content with it as it is. We go to live in some country

town. At first we do not like it; it is not like the home we came

from; but soon we begin to be reconciled, and feel that, as Dr.

Holmes said of Boston, our town is the hub of the universe. So,

when we are content to allow our relations to remain as they are,

we adapt ourselves to them, and they adapt themselves to us, and

we constantly, unconsciously (because God made us so) work toward

the perfecting of all the interests arising from those

relations. But the moment we wish to sell a house, or remove from

a town, how many defects we discover! The place has not the same

appearance to us at all; we wish we could get out of it; we feel

all the time more and more dissatisfied. So, let any married

person take the idea that he may dissolve this relation, and

enter into a new one, and how many faults he may discover that

otherwise never would have been noticed! The marriage will become

intolerable. The theory will work that result; it is in the

nature of things, and that to me is everything.

Of course, I would not have man or woman sacrificed--by no means.

First of all, let every human being maintain his own position as

a self-protecting human being. At all hazards, let him never sin,

or consent to be sacrificed to the hurt of himself or of another;

and when he has taken this stand, let him act in harmony with it.

Would I say to any woman, "You are bound, because you are legally

married to one who is debased to the level of the brute, to be

the mother of his children?" I say to her, "No! while the law of

God continues, you are bound never to make one whom you do not

honor and respect, as well as love, the father of any child of

yours. It is your first and highest duty to be true to yourself,

true to posterity, and true to society." (Applause). Thus, let

each decide for himself and for herself what is right. But, I

repeat, either marriage is in its very nature a relation which,

once formed, never can be dissolved, and either the essential

obligations growing out of it exist forever, or the relation may

at any time be dissolved, and at any time those obligations be

annulled. And what are those obligations? Two persons, if I

understand marriage, covenant to work together, to uphold each

other in all excellence, and to mutually blend their lives and

interests into a common harmony. I believe that God has so made

man and woman, that it is not good for them to be alone, that

they each need a co-worker. There is no work on God's footstool

which man can do alone and do well, and there is no work which

woman can do alone and do well. (Applause). We need that the two

should stand side by side everywhere. All over the world, we need

this co-operation of the two classes--not because they are alike,

but because they are unlike--in trying to make the whole world

better. Then we need something more than these class workers. Two

persons need to stand side by side, to stay up each other's

hands, to take an interest in each other's welfare, to build up a

family, to cluster about it all the beauties and excellencies of

home life; in short, to be to each other what only one man and

one woman can be to each other in all God's earth.

No grown-up human being ought to rush blindly into this most

intimate, most important, most enduring of human relations; and

will you let a young man, at the age of fourteen, contract

marriage, or a young maiden either? If the law undertakes to

regulate the matter at all, let it regulate it upon principles of

common-sense. But this is a matter which must be very much

regulated by public opinion, by our teachers. What do you, the

guides of our youth, say? You say to the young girl, "You ought

to expect to be married before you are twenty, or about that

time; you should intend to be; and from the time you are fifteen,

it should be made your one life purpose; and in all human

probability, you may expect to spend the next ten or twenty years

in the nursery, and at forty or fifty, you will be an old woman,

your life will be well-nigh worn out." I stand here to say that

this is all false. Let the young girl be instructed that, above

her personal interests, her home, and social life, she is to have

a great life purpose, as broad as the rights and interests of

humanity. I say, let every young girl feel this, as much as every

young man does. We have no right, we, who expect to live forever,

to play about here as if we were mere flies, enjoying ourselves

in the sunshine. We ought to have an earnest purpose outside of

home, outside of our family relations. Then let the young girl

fit herself for this. Let her be taught that she ought not to be

married in her teens. Let her wait, as a young man does, if he is

sensible, until she is twenty-five or thirty. (Applause). She

will then know how to choose properly, and probably she will not

be deceived in her estimate of character; she will have had a

certain life-discipline, which will enable her to control her

household matters with wise judgment, so that, while she is

looking after her family, she may still keep her great life

purpose, for which she was educated, and to which she has given

her best energies, steadily in view. She need not absorb herself

in her home, and God never intended that she should; and then, if

she has lived according to the laws of physiology, and according

to the laws of common-sense, she ought to be, at the age of fifty

years, just where man is, just where our great men are, in the

very prime of life! When her young children have gone out of her

home, then let her enter in earnest upon the great work of life

outside of home and its relations. (Applause).

It is a shame for our women to have no steady purpose or pursuit,

and to make the mere fact of womanhood a valid plea for

indolence; it is a greater shame that they should be instructed

thus to throw all the responsibility of working for the general

good upon the other sex. God has not intended it. But as long as

you make women helpless, inefficient beings, who never expect to

earn a farthing in their lives, who never expect to do anything

outside of the family, but to be cared for and protected by

others throughout life, you can not have true marriages; and if

you try to break up the old ones, you will do it against the

woman and in favor of the man. Last week I went back to a town

where I used to live, and was told that a woman, whose husband

was notoriously the most miserable man in the town, had in

despair taken her own life. I asked what had become of the

husband, and the answer was, "Married again." And yet everybody

there knows that he is the vilest and most contemptible man in

the whole neighborhood. Any man, no matter how wretched he maybe,

will find plenty of women to accept him, while they are rendered

so helpless and weak by their whole education that they must be

supported or starve. The advantage, if this theory of marriage is

adopted, will not be on the side of woman, but altogether on the

side of man. The cure for the evils that now exist is not in

dissolving marriage, but it is in giving to the married woman her

own natural independence and self-sovereignty, by which she can

maintain herself.

Yes, our women and our men are both degenerate; they are weak

and ignoble. "Dear me!" said a pretty, indolent young lady, "I

had a great deal rather my husband would take care of me, than to

be obliged to do it for myself." "Of course you would," said a

blunt old lady who was present; "and your brother would a great

deal rather marry an heiress, and lie upon a sofa eating

lollypops, bought with her money, than to do anything manly or

noble. The only difference is, that as heiresses are not very

plenty, he may probably have to marry a poor girl, and then

society will insist that he shall exert himself to earn a living

for the family; but you, poor thing, will only have to open your

mouth, all your life long, like a clam, and eat." (Applause and

laughter). So long as society is constituted in such a way that

woman is expected to do nothing if she have a father, brother, or

husband able to support her, there is no salvation for her, in or

out of marriage. When you tie up your arm, it will become weak

and feeble; and when you tie up woman, she will become weak and

helpless. Give her, then, some earnest purpose in life, hold up

to her the true ideal of marriage, and it is enough--I am

content! (Loud applause).

ERNESTINE L. ROSE said:--Mrs. President--The question of a

Divorce law seems to me one of the greatest importance to all

parties, but I presume that the very advocacy of divorce will be

called "Free Love." For my part (and I wish distinctly to define

my position), I do not know what others understand by that term;

to me, in its truest significance, love must be free, or it

ceases to be love. In its low and degrading sense, it is not love

at all, and I have as little to do with its name as its reality.

The Rev. Mrs. Blackwell gave us quite a sermon on what woman

ought to be, what she ought to do, and what marriage ought to be;

an excellent sermon in its proper place, but not when the

important question of a Divorce law is under consideration. She

treats woman as some ethereal being. It is very well to be

ethereal to some extent, but I tell you, my friends, it is quite

requisite to be a little material, also. At all events, we are

so, and, being so, it proves a law of our nature. (Applause).

It were indeed well if woman could be what she ought to be, man

what he ought to be, and marriage what it ought to be; and it is

to be hoped that through the Woman's Rights movement--the

equalizing of the laws, making them more just, and making woman

more independent--we will hasten the coming of the millennium,

when marriage shall indeed be a bond of union and affection. But,

alas! it is not yet; and I fear that sermons, however well meant,

will not produce that desirable end; and as long as the evil is

here, we must look it in the face without shrinking, grapple with

it manfully, and the more complicated it is, the more

courageously must it be analyzed, combated, and destroyed.

(Applause).

Mrs. Blackwell told us that, marriage being based on the perfect

equality of husband and wife, it can not be destroyed. But is it

so? Where? Where and when have the sexes yet been equal in

physical or mental education, in position, or in law? When and

where have they yet been recognized by society, or by themselves,

as equals? "Equal in rights," says Mrs. B. But are they equal in

rights? If they were, we would need no conventions to claim our

rights. "She can assert her equality." Yes, she can assert it,

but does that assertion constitute a true marriage? And when the

husband holds the iron heel of legal oppression on the

subjugated neck of the wife until every spark of womanhood is

crushed out, will it heal the wounded heart, the lacerated

spirit, the destroyed hope, to assert her equality? And shall she

still continue the wife? Is that a marriage which must not be

dissolved? (Applause).

According to Mr. Greeley's definition, viz., that there is no

marriage unless the ceremony is performed by a minister and in a

church, the tens of thousands married according to the laws of

this and most of the other States, by a lawyer or justice of the

peace, a mayor or an alderman, are not married at all. According

to the definition of our reverend sister, no one has ever yet

been married, as woman has never yet been perfectly equal with

man. I say to both, take your position, and abide by the

consequences. If the few only, or no one, is really married, why

do you object to a law that shall acknowledge the fact? You

certainly ought not to force people to live together who are not

married. (Applause).

Mr. Greeley tells us, that, marriage being a Divine institution,

nothing but death should ever separate the parties; but when he

was asked, "Would you have a being who, innocent and

inexperienced, in the youth and ardor of affection, in the fond

hope that the sentiment was reciprocated, united herself to one

she loved and cherished, and then found (no matter from what

cause) that his profession was false, his heart hollow, his acts

cruel, that she was degraded by his vice, despised for his

crimes, cursed by his very presence, and treated with every

conceivable ignominy--would you have her drag out a miserable

existence as his wife?" "No, no," says he; "in that case, they

ought to separate." Separate? But what becomes of the union

divinely instituted, which death only should part? (Applause).

The papers have of late been filled with the heart-sickening

accounts of wife-poisoning. Whence come these terrible crimes?

From the want of a Divorce law. Could the Hardings be legally

separated, they would not be driven to the commission of murder

to be free from each other; and which is preferable, a Divorce

law, to dissolve an unholy union, which all parties agree is no

true marriage, or a murder of one, and an execution (legal

murder) of the other party? But had the unfortunate woman, just

before the poisoned cup was presented to her lips, pleaded for a

divorce, Mrs. Blackwell would have read her a sermon equal to St.

Paul's "Wives, be obedient to your husbands," only she would have

added, "You must assert your equality," but "you must keep with

your husband and work for his redemption, as I would do for my

husband"; and Mr. Greeley would say, "As you chose to marry him,

it is your own fault; you must abide the consequences, for it is

a 'divine institution, a union for life, which nothing but death

can end.'" (Applause). The Tribune had recently a long sermon,

almost equal to the one we had this morning from our reverend

sister, on "Fast Women." The evils it spoke of were terrible

indeed, but, like all other sermons, it was one-sided. Not one

single word was said about fast men, except that the "poor victim

had to spend so much money." The writer forgot that it is the

demand which calls the supply into existence. But what was the

primary cause of that tragic end? Echo answers, "what?" Ask the

lifeless form of the murdered woman, and she may disclose the

terrible secret, and show you that, could she have been legally

divorced, she might not have been driven to the watery grave of a

"fast woman." (Applause).

But what is marriage? A human institution, called out by the

needs of social, affectional human nature, for human purposes,

its objects are, first, the happiness of the parties immediately

concerned, and, secondly, the welfare of society. Define it as

you please, these are only its objects; and therefore if, from

well-ascertained facts, it is demonstrated that the real objects

are frustrated, that instead of union and happiness, there are

only discord and misery to themselves, and vice and crime to

society, I ask, in the name of individual happiness and social

morality and well-being, why such a marriage should be binding

for life?--why one human being should be chained for life to the

dead body of another? "But they may separate and still remain

married." What a perversion of the very term! Is that the union

which "death only should part"? It may be according to the

definition of the Rev. Mrs. Blackwell's theology and Mr.

Greeley's dictionary, but it certainly is not according to

common-sense or the dictates of morality. No, no! "It is not well

for man to be alone," before nor after marriage. (Applause).

I therefore ask for a Divorce law. Divorce is now granted for

some crimes; I ask it for others also. It is granted for a

State's prison offense. I ask that personal cruelty to a wife,

whom he swore to "love, cherish, and protect," may be made a

heinous crime--a perjury and a State's prison offense, for which

divorce shall be granted. Willful desertion for one year should

be a sufficient cause for divorce, for the willful deserter

forfeits the sacred title of husband or wife. Habitual

intemperance, or any other vice which makes the husband or wife

intolerable and abhorrent to the other, ought to be sufficient

cause for divorce. I ask for a law of Divorce, so as to secure

the real objects and blessings of married life, to prevent the

crimes and immoralities now practiced, to prevent "Free Love," in

its most hideous form, such as is now carried on but too often

under the very name of marriage, where hypocrisy is added to the

crime of legalized prostitution. "Free Love," in its degraded

sense, asks for no Divorce law. It acknowledges no marriage, and

therefore requires no divorce. I believe in true marriages, and

therefore I ask for a law to free men and women from false ones.

(Applause).

But it is said that if divorce were easily granted, "men and

women would marry to-day and unmarry to-morrow." Those who say

that, only prove that they have no confidence in themselves, and

therefore can have no confidence in others. But the assertion is

false; it is a libel on human nature. It is the indissoluble

chain that corrodes the flesh. Remove the indissolubility, and

there would be less separation than now, for it would place the

parties on their good behavior, the same as during courtship.

Human nature is not quite so changeable; give it more freedom,

and it will be less so. We are a good deal the creatures of

habit, but we will not be forced. We live (I speak from

experience) in uncomfortable houses for years, rather than move,

though we have the privilege to do so every year; but force any

one to live for life in one house, and he would run away from it,

though it were a palace.

But Mr. Greeley asks, "How could the mother look the child in the

face, if she married a second time?" With infinitely better grace

and better conscience than to live as some do now, and show their

children the degrading example, how utterly father and mother

despise and hate each other, and still live together as husband

and wife. She could say to her child, "As, unfortunately, your

father proved himself unworthy, your mother could not be so

unworthy as to continue to live with him. As he failed to be a

true father to you, I have endeavored to supply his place with

one, who, though not entitled to the name, will, I hope, prove

himself one in the performance of a father's duties." (Applause).

Finally, educate woman, to enable her to promote her

independence, and she will not be obliged to marry for a home and

a subsistence. Give the wife an equal right with the husband in

the property acquired after marriage, and it will be a bond of

union between them. Diamond cement, applied on both sides of a

fractured vase, re-unites the parts, and prevents them from

falling asunder. A gold band is more efficacious than an iron

law. Until now, the gold has all been on one side, and the iron

law on the other. Remove it; place the golden band of justice and

mutual interest around both husband and wife, and it will hide

the little fractures which may have occurred, even from their own

perception, and allow them effectually to re-unite. A union of

interest helps to preserve a union of hearts. (Loud applause).

WENDELL PHILLIPS then said: I object to entering these

resolutions upon the journal of this Convention. (Applause). I

would move to lay them on the table; but my conviction that they

are out of order is so emphatic, that I wish to go further than

that, and move that they do not appear on the journals of this

Convention. If the resolutions were merely the expressions of

individual sentiments, then they ought not to appear in the form

of resolutions, but as speeches, because a resolution has a

certain emphasis and authority. It is assumed to give the voice

of an assembly, and is not taken as an individual expression,

which a speech is.

Of course, every person must be interested in the question of

marriage, and the branch that grows out of it, the question of

divorce; and no one could deny, who has listened for an hour,

that we have been favored with an exceedingly able discussion of

those questions. But here we have nothing to do with them, any

more than with the question of intemperance, or Kansas, in my

opinion. This Convention is no Marriage Convention--if it were,

the subject would be in order; but this Convention, if I

understand it, assembles to discuss the laws that rest unequally

upon women, not those that rest equally upon men and women. It is

the laws that make distinctions between the sexes. Now, whether a

man and a woman are married for a year or a life is a question

which affects the man just as much as the woman. At the end of a

month, the man is without a wife exactly as much as the woman is

without a husband. The question whether, having entered into a

contract, you shall be bound to an unworthy partner, affects the

man as much as the woman. Certainly, there are cases where men

are bound to women carcasses as well as where women are bound to

men carcasses. (Laughter and applause). We have nothing to do

with a question which affects both sexes equally. Therefore, it

seems to me we have nothing to do with the theory of marriage,

which is the basis, as Mrs. Rose has very clearly shown, of

divorce. One question grows out of the other; and therefore the

question of the permanence of marriage, and the laws relating to

marriage, in the essential meaning of that word, are not for our

consideration. Of course I know, as everybody else does, that the

results of marriage, in the present condition of society, are

often more disastrous to woman than to men. Intemperance, for

instance, burdens a wife worse than a husband, owing to the

present state of society. It is not the fault of the

statute-book, and no change in the duration of marriage would

alter that inequality.

The reason why I object so emphatically to the introduction of

the question here is because it is a question which admits of so

many theories, physiological and religious, and what is

technically called "free-love," that it is large enough for a

movement of its own. Our question is only unnecessarily burdened

with it. It can not be kept within the convenient limits of this

enterprise; for this Woman's Rights Convention is not Man's

Convention, and I hold that I, as a man, have an exactly equal

interest in the essential question of marriage as woman has. I

move, then, that these series of resolutions do not appear at all

upon the journal of the Convention. If the speeches are reported,

of course the resolutions will go with them. Most journals will

report them as adopted. But I say to those who use this platform

to make speeches on this question, that they do far worse than

take more than their fair share of the time; they open a gulf

into which our distinctive movement will be plunged, and its

success postponed two years for every one that it need

necessarily be.

Of course, in these remarks, I intend no reflection upon those

whose views differ from mine in regard to introducing this

subject before the Convention; but we had an experience two years

ago on this point, and it seems to me that we might have learned

by that lesson. No question--Anti-Slavery, Temperance, Woman's

Rights--can move forward efficiently, unless it keeps its

platform separate and unmixed with extraneous issues, unmixed

with discussions which carry us into endless realms of debate. We

have now, under our present civilization, to deal with the simple

question which we propose--how to make that statute-book look

upon woman exactly as it does upon man. Under the law of Divorce,

one stands exactly like the other. All we have asked in regard to

the law of property has been, that the statute-book of New York

shall make the wife exactly like the husband; we do not go

another step, and state what that right shall be. We do not ask

law-makers whether there shall be rights of dower and

courtesy--rights to equal shares--rights to this or that interest

in property. That is not our business. All we say is, "Gentlemen

law-makers, we represent woman; make what laws you please about

marriage and property, but let woman stand under them exactly as

man does; let sex deprive her of no right, let sex confer no

special right; and that is all we claim." (Applause). Society has

done that as to marriage and divorce, and we have nothing more to

ask of it on this question, as a Woman's Rights body.

ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS, of New York City, seconded the motion of Mr.

Phillips, and said that she wished the whole subject of marriage

and divorce might be swept from that platform, as it was

manifestly not the place for it.

Mr. GARRISON said he fully concurred in opinion with his friend,

Mr. Phillips, that they had not come together to settle

definitely the question of marriage, as such, on that platform;

still, he should be sorry to have the motion adopted, as against

the resolutions of Mrs. Stanton, because they were a part of her

speech, and her speech was an elucidation of her resolutions,

which were offered on her own responsibility, not on behalf of

the Business Committee, and which did not, therefore, make the

Convention responsible for them. It seemed to him that, in the

liberty usually taken on that platform, both by way of argument

and illustration, to show the various methods by which woman was

unjustly, yet legally, subjected to the absolute control of man,

she ought to be permitted to present her own sentiments. It was

not the specific object of an Anti-Slavery Convention--for

example--to discuss the conduct of Rev. Nehemiah Adams, or the

position of Stephen A. Douglas, or the course of _The York

Herald_; yet they did, incidentally, discuss all these, and many

other matters closely related to the great struggle for the

freedom of the slave. So this question of marriage came in as at

least incidental to the main question of the equal rights of

woman.

Mrs. BLACKWELL: I should like to say a few words in explanation.

I do not understand whether our friend Wendell Phillips objects

to both series of resolutions on the subject of divorce, or

merely to mine.

Mr. PHILLIPS: To both.

Mrs. BLACKWELL: I wish simply to say, that I did not come to the

Convention proposing to speak on this subject, but on another;

but finding that these resolutions were to be introduced, and

believing the subject legitimate; I said, "I will take my own

position." So I prepared the resolutions, as they enabled me at

the moment better to express my thought than I could do by merely

extemporizing.

Now does this question grow legitimately out of the great

question of woman's equality? The world says, marriage is not an

alliance between equals in human rights. My whole argument was

based on the position that it is. If this question is not

legitimate, what is? Then do we not ask for laws which are not

equal between man and woman? What have we been doing here in New

York State? I spent three months asking the State to allow the

drunkard's wife her own earnings. Do I believe that the wife

ought to take her own earnings, as her own earnings? No; I do not

believe it. I believe that in a true marriage, the husband and

wife earn for the family, and that the property is the

family's--belongs jointly to the husband and wife. But if the law

says that the property is the husband's, if it says that he may

take the wages of his wife, just as the master does those of the

slave, and she has no right to them, we must seek a temporary

redress. We must take the first step, by compelling legislators,

who will not look at great principles, to protect the wife of the

drunkard, by giving her her own earnings to expend upon herself

and her children, and not allow them to be wasted by the husband.

I say that it is legitimate for us to ask for a law which we

believe is merely a temporary expedient, not based upon the great

principle of human and marriage equality. Just so with this

question of marriage. It must come upon this platform, for at

present it is a relation which legally and socially bears

unequally upon woman. We must have temporary redress for the

wife. The whole subject must be incidentally opened for

discussion. The only question is one of present fitness. Was it

best, under all the circumstances, to introduce it now? I have

not taken the responsibility of answering in the affirmative.

But it must come here and be settled, sooner or later, because

its interests are everywhere, and all human relations center in

this one marriage relation. (Applause).

SUSAN B. ANTHONY: I hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion

that these resolutions shall not appear on the records of the

Convention. I am very sure that it would be contrary to all

parliamentary usage to say, that when the speeches which enforced

and advocated the resolutions are reported and published in the

proceedings, the resolutions shall not be placed there. And as to

the point that this question does not belong to this

platform,--from that I totally dissent. Marriage has ever been a

one-sided matter, resting most unequally upon the sexes. By it,

man gains all--woman loses all; tyrant law and lust reign supreme

with him--meek submission and ready obedience alone befit her.

Woman has never been consulted; her wish has never been taken

into consideration as regards the terms of the marriage compact.

By law, public sentiment and religion, from the time of Moses

down to the present day, woman has never been thought of other

than as a piece of property, to be disposed of at the will and

pleasure of man. And this very hour, by our statute-books, by our

(so called) enlightened Christian civilization, she has no voice

whatever in saying what shall be the basis of the relation. She

must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all.

And then again, on Mr. Phillips' own ground, the discussion is

perfectly in order, since nearly all the wrongs of which we

complain grow out of the inequality, the injustice of the

marriage laws, that rob the wife of the right to herself and her

children--that make her the slave of the man she marries.

I hope, therefore, the resolutions will be allowed to go out to

the public, that there may be a fair report of the ideas which

have actually been presented here, that they may not be left to

the mercy of the secular press. I trust the Convention will not

vote to forbid the publication of those resolutions with the

proceedings.

Rev. WM. HOISINGTON, the blind preacher: Publish all that you

have said and done here, and let the public know it.

The question was then put on the motion of Mr. Phillips, and it

was lost.

After which, the resolutions reported by the Business Committee

were adopted without dissent.

Miss MARY GREW, of Philadelphia, said: Friends, we are about to

separate. This convention was called for the consideration of one

of the most important questions before the American people. The

press may ridicule your movement, the pulpit denounce it, but, as

time rolls on, it will be seen--the press and pulpit will

see--that it is one of the most important questions that has ever

agitated the community. It is well that those who are engaged in

this movement should go forth deeply impressed with the

importance of the work that is before them. It is well that you

who have assembled from curiosity, to listen to what these

"fanatics" have to say, should take home with you to your souls

one thought which is sufficient to settle this whole question.

All the arguments that have been adduced against us, and against

granting to woman all her rights, come to us in one form or

another of prejudice or expediency. Talk with whom you will about

it,--the priest, politician, merchant, farmer, mechanic, and one

after another says, (you have heard them, I have heard them, we

all hear them,) to every right which woman claims, "I grant you

that, in the abstract, you are right; but it is not expedient,

nor wise, nor safe for woman nor man, nor good for the world."

Let me tell you, that the man who grants that the position we

assume is, in the abstract, right, has granted all we want; and

if he is not ready to take that step of abstract right, he only

assumes to be wiser than He who made the world.

Mrs. President, I hear every day of my life, almost, the

assertion that it is fanaticism to say that it is always safe and

right to follow abstract right. This principle does not belong to

any one belief; it is the living soul of God's universe, that the

absolute right is safe. If woman has the same right as man to

read, to vote, to rule, to learn, to teach, there is nothing

further to be said about it; and I never care to argue with the

man who says it is right, but for some reason or other, it ought

not to be granted, for he has granted everything, and has no

ground left to stand upon.

Is it fanaticism to believe that God is wiser than man; that He,

"who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the

earth," who "commanded the morning, and caused the day-spring to

know its place," is wise enough to give laws to the universe

which it shall be safe for you and me to obey? (Applause). Into

this fanaticism this world is to be educated, if it is to be

saved from going down to moral ruin and death. Remember, then, O

man! father, husband, brother, clergyman, and

politician--remember, when these words slip so easily from your

tongues, as they often do, "I grant you have the same abstract

right to do this that man has," you grant all that woman claims;

and remember, as you stand reverently in the presence of God,

that if you assert that that is not safe which He has pronounced

to be right, you claim to be wiser, not than these women or these

men who stand on the platform of the "Woman's Rights Convention,"

but you claim to be wiser than the Creator of man and woman.

(Applause).

Allusion was made here this morning--well and wisely made--to the

charge that when woman walks out into the avenues of public life,

there to gain a living for herself and her children, or to help

guide the nation, she ceases to be domestic, and faithful to the

cares and shrine of home. We heard something well said this

morning on the sphere of woman being the home, and we are told

that this objection to our movement was altogether dishonest,

contemptible, and ridiculous. It is not always such. Good men and

true, and sometimes wise men, also, really in their souls believe

that if a woman touches a ballot, her hand will be unfit for

domestic duties; that if she teaches in the public congregation,

she can not act well her part in the family circle. As I listened

to what was said here, the words called to my mind the image of a

woman of America, known as a religious and moral teacher, who

bears a name of which this nation will one day be proud, but now

slandered by a venal press, scorned by an arrogant pulpit,

little appreciated by the mass of men and women, for whom the

bearer of it is laboring night and day. The image of that woman

rose before me. The world regards her as a public woman, as out

of her sphere, and infers that she is neglectful of the cares and

insensible to the loveliness of domestic life; and as I

remembered her, I felt as I ever feel, that there is not a woman

who, as a representative of my own sex, I would sooner show to

the world as the embodiment of all domestic beauty and wifely

care and motherly fidelity. I only wish that they and you might

know her as I know her. I only wish that you might see in her, as

I see in her, the very best possible illustration of the power of

guiding and guarding all the sanctity of home, of blessing

husband and children and grandchildren, and exerting in the

guidance of her household an intellectual power which would be

the glory of this or any other platform. Not only do husband and

children "rise up and call her blessed," but in the time to come,

the children and children's children of those who now scorn her

name--of priests who have despised it, editors who have ridiculed

and slandered it, and heaped upon it all of the ignominy of their

souls--will thank God, as they reap the benefit of her exertions

and her beautiful life, for the name of LUCRETIA MOTT.

(Applause).

The word I would impress upon you all, as you go hence, is

this--it is always safe to do right. Carry away with you from

this Convention, my friends, this one thought--God is wiser than

man. What He has made right, He has also made safe. His paths are

paths of pleasantness, and all His ways are peace. And to those

who go forward, bearing this great cause in their hands, to work

for themselves, for their sisters, for their mothers--to them I

would say, "Be not discouraged at any obstacles that may lie in

your way! Forget, for a little while, the sneers of the press and

the pulpit, the laugh of the fashionable lady, who calls you

unladylike, and the scorn of arrogant men, who appreciate not

your labors! You need not pay back the laughter and the scorn

with scorn. Your work is too great, too high, too holy. Forgive

them, and pass on! Rejoice to think that, in a few years, they,

too, will rise up and thank you for it. Those who work for

mankind must be content not to receive their reward in the

appreciation of their services as they pass through life. It is

of little consequence. The only thing is to be sure we are doing

right, and living for some great purpose; for, of all the

afflictions that can befall a man or woman, there is none so

great as to pass through life without effecting anything--to die

and leave the world no better than we found it, never being

missed in consequence of any useful work we have done.

(Applause). No good cause can go backward. No good cause

declines. Nothing can put us down if we are right. All that we

need to sustain and strengthen us in any great work is to be

quite satisfied with the smile of God, and to have faith and hope

that man shall at last be wholly and utterly redeemed and saved."

(Applause).

The Convention then adjourned _sine die_.

_From The New York Tribune of May 80_.

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.

_To the Editor of The New York Tribune_:

SIR:--At our recent National Woman's Rights Convention many were

surprised to hear Wendell Phillips object to the question of

Marriage and Divorce, as irrelevant to our platform. He said: "We

had no right to discuss there any laws or customs but those where

inequality existed in the sexes; that the laws on Marriage and

Divorce rested equally on man and woman; that he suffered, as

much as she possibly could, the wrongs and abuses of an

ill-assorted marriage."

Now, it must strike every careful thinker, that an immense

difference rests in the fact, that man has made the laws,

cunningly and selfishly, for his own purpose. From Coke down to

Kent, who can cite one clause of the marriage contract where

woman has the advantage? When man suffers from false legislation,

he has his remedy in his own hands. Shall woman be denied the

right of protest against laws in which she has had no voice--laws

which outrage the holiest affections of her nature--laws which

transcend the limits of human legislation--in a Convention called

for the express purpose of considering her wrongs? He might as

well object to a protest against the injustice of hanging a

woman, because capital punishment bears equally on man and woman.

The contract of marriage is by no means equal. The law permits

the girl to marry at twelve years of age, while it requires

several years more of experience on the part of the boy. In

entering this compact, the man gives up nothing that he before

possessed--he is a man still; while the legal existence of the

woman is suspended during marriage, and henceforth she is known

but in and through the husband. She is nameless, purseless,

childless--though a woman, an heiress, and a mother.

Blackstone says: "The husband and wife are one, and that one is

the husband." Kent says: "The legal effects of marriage are

generally deducible from the principle of the common law, by

which the husband and wife are regarded as one person, and her

legal existence and authority lost or suspended during the

continuance of the matrimonial union."--Vol. 2, p. 109. Kent

refers to Coke on Littleton, 112, a. 187, B. Litt. sec. 168, 291.

The wife is regarded by all legal authorities as a

"_feme-covert_," placed wholly _sub potestate viri_. Her moral

responsibility, even, is merged in the husband. The law takes it

for granted that the wife lives in fear of her husband; that his

command is her highest law: hence a wife is not punishable for

theft committed in presence of her husband.--Kent, vol. 2, p.

127. An unmarried woman can make contracts, sue and be sued,

enjoy the rights of property, to her inheritance--to her

wages--to her person--to her children; but, in marriage, she is

robbed by law of all and every natural and civil right. "The

disability of the wife to contract, so as to bind herself, arises

not from want of discretion, but because she has entered into an

indissoluble connection, by which she is placed under the power

and protection of her husband."--Kent, vol. 2, p. 127. She is

possessed of certain rights until she is married; then all are

suspended, to revive again the moment the breath goes out of the

husband's body.--See "Cowen's Treatise," vol. 2, p. 709.

If the contract be equal, whence come the terms "marital

power"--"marital rights"--"obedience and restraint"--"dominion

and control"--"power and protection," etc., etc.? Many cases are

stated, showing the exercise of a most questionable power over

the wife, sustained by the courts.--See Bishop on Divorce, p.

489.

The laws on Divorce are quite as unequal as those on Marriage;

yes, far more so. The advantages seem to be all on one side, and

the penalties on the other. In case of divorce, if the husband be

the guilty party, he still retains the greater part of the

property. If the wife be the guilty party, she goes out of the

partnership penniless.--Kent, vol. 2, p. 33; Bishop on Divorce,

p. 492.

In New York and some other States, the wife of the guilty husband

can now sue for a divorce in her own name, and the costs come out

of the husband's estate; but, in the majority of the States, she

is still compelled to sue in the name of another, as she has no

means of paying costs, even though she may have brought her

thousands into the partnership. "The allowance to the innocent

wife of _ad interim_ alimony and money to sustain the suit, is

not regarded as strict right in her, but of sound discretion in

the court."--Bishop on Divorce, p. 581.